And Dialing Back On Kony 2012 And Virality

Doug Bernard | Washington DC

Periodically we like to share a few of the stories and posts from across the web that caught our eye.  There are no editorial threads implied connecting these items together, other than being interesting.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and wife Asma, on another shopping spree?

#1: What’s Playing On Bashar’s iPod? Over the last few weeks, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been dogged by several high-profile and embarrassing leaks of personal information and secret files. First, London’s Guardian newspaper began publishing what is says are a large cache of personal emails sent to and from the Syrian autocrat. Then this week, Al Jazeera obtained a separate set of what it says are top-secret documents prepared for Assad and allegedly spirited out of the country by Abdel Majid Barakat, who was until recently said to be a trusted aide.

The secret files, dubbed “The Damascus Documents” by Al Jazeera, contain alleged intelligence briefs and plans to maintain control of the Syrian capital and suppress protests in Homs and Aleppo, with violence if necessary. The emails deal with far less weighty matters, but are at least as embarrassing; if not for the entire regime than for President Assad himself. As VOA’s Cecily Hilleary notes over at “Middle East Voices,” among those emails are one containing a photo of a mostly-nude woman (unidentified,) details of his wife Asma’s latest shopping excursions – $6,000 for crystal-encrusted Christian Louboutin shoes in Paris par exemple, purchased while Syria’s military shelled civilians in Homs – or Bashar’s taste in downloaded music. Among his recent purchases: Blake Shelton’s “God Gave Me You,” New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle” (an oldie but a goodie) and “Don’t Talk Just Kiss” by forgotten one-hit wonder Right Said Fred.

We leave it to you to read in whatever these downloads may say about the man trying to hold onto power in Damascus.

#2: Kony Video and Viral Rumors. Also over just the last few weeks, an old nemesis, and a new video, have burst onto the international stage. The man is Joseph Kony, the brutal Ugandan leader of the rebel group the Lord’s Resistance Army. The video is “Kony 2012“, created by human rights campaigner Jason Russell with the goal of finding Kony and bringing him to justice at the International Criminal Court.

Produced by the non-profit group “International Children”, Kony 2012 quickly went viral – as did, it seems, some of the press accounts. News reports suddenly started calling it “the most viral video ever” and social media consultants breathlessly extolled it as a model for any future marketing campaign. Yet as with many things at first blush, things weren’t quite always as they seem.

Film maker Jason Russell in better days

With 84 million views on YouTube, there’s no denying Kony 2012 is very popular. But even now it has a long way to go to match truly viral videos such as  “Charlie Bit My Finger” which clocks in with 433, 284, 296 views (and still counting.) And while Kony2012 did, in fact, spread quickly once released on YouTube, weeks earlier International Children had released the video online on other sites like Vimeo, priming the viral pump and extending the time line for its distribution.

Finally we were reminded, yet again, that “going viral” is a sword that cuts many ways. Just a week after grabbing headlines for his film, Jason Russell himself went viral after several people filmed him  in a naked, obscenity-laced rant on a southern California street corner. Not only did those videos go viral, so too did rumors in Africa of just what lead to the film maker’s breakdown: African blogs and message boards quickly filled with the rumor that Joseph Kony “put a hex” on Russell as retaliation. for the record, his family says Russell is suffering from “brief reactive psychosis,” a short-term psychotic break spurred by excessive stress.

#3: Iran’s “Electronic Curtain.” Last week, President Obama released a video online in an effort to reach out to Iranian citizens directly. Billed as a Nowruz message, Mr. Obama said his administration wanted to engage with the Iranian public, but that an “electronic curtain” had fallen around that nation, isolating it from the rest of the world. His hope, he said, was to help lift that curtain.

This is familiar territory for VOA. Iran has long tried to keep us behind that curtain, jamming our radio and TV broadcasts, interfering with satellite transmissions (in violation of international covenants) and doing their best to block our websites from curious eyes. And for just as long, we’ve been working on finding new ways to talk with Iranian nationals. To help, the White House recently relaxed export limits on a variety of online communication tools to Iran, such as Skype, GoogleTalk, Flash and others.

It’s a good start. Wrote VOA Director David Ensor about President Obama’s outreach: “During this season of Nowruz, we call on the Iranian government to end these dishonorable practices, and to draw back its “electronic curtain,” restoring the freedom of information to the Iranian people.”

Bonus #4: Enemies of the Internet, 2011. Each year the non-profit free-speech organization Reporters Without Borders releases a comprehensive survey of online freedoms and restrictions of expression in a report dubbed “Enemies of the Internet.” Recently they released their overview report for the year 2011, and the results, much like they are each year, present a mixed bag.

We could give you the thumbnails, but VOA’s Suzanne Presto does a much better  job in her feature report, so here’s our encouragement to check it out.

And Why Digital Storage May Not Be Forever

Doug Bernard | Washington DC

Periodically we like to share a few of the stories and posts from across the web that caught our eye.  There are no editorial threads implied connecting these items together, other than being interesting.

#1: Who’s Censoring Whom? The Brookings Institute think tank has just issued a report probing which governments around the world were interfering with their citizens’ Internet activities, and how they were doing it.  While the results paint a mixed picture, study authors clearly suggest that web manipulation is not just a tactic used by totalitarian regimes.

The report, titled “The Dictator’s Dilemma,” documents 606 examples where governmental agencies somehow manipulated national Internet traffic.  These ranged from limiting access to specific sites or services, to deploying large-scale firewalls, to tactics that have become more popular since the Arab Spring uprisings: launching denial-of-service attacks on opposition groups, spying on people’s traffic, or pulling the plug on the Internet completely.  Of those cases, 45% were initiated by governments considered established or emerging democracies, while 52% were launched by authoritarian regimes.  Worse, while totalitarian governments interfered more often, a larger number of democratic nations did so.   Write the authors:  “We find that overall more democracies participate in network interventions than authoritarian regimes.  However, authoritarian regimes conduct shutdowns with greater frequency.”

It’s a thick report, meaning the results don’t always lend themselves to quick summary or easy characterization.  But as a reality on who’s doing what out there, it’s a good read.

#2: Got A Second?  Take a Poll!: With the spread of small, wireless devices, it’s becoming more common for people to be using two, three or more gadgets at the same time.  Annoyingly common, if you ask some.  Manners aside, it’s less surprising to see someone watching a sporting event on TV, blogging about the game on their laptop and tweeting score updates to friends on their smart phone, now more than ever.

It’s exactly for this sort of multi-tasker that the new application “Wayin” was made.  Now available for iPhone and Android platforms, Wayin allows users to make their own polls about any topic they choose; for example, the latest baseball playoff game.

These polls can be immediately shared with groups small or large, from just your friends to anyone watching the game on TV, and give people a social way to connect and share their opinions – briefly – in real time.  It only takes a few moments, and that’s by design.

Wayin is still a small start-up company based in Colorado, but it’s getting some impressive help.  Scott NcNealy, co-founder of the now acquired giant Sun Microsystems, is on board as a consultant.  That alone makes Wayin worth a second look, especially by those businesses wanting to harness social media for their own uses.  Writes Ina Fried over at AllThingsD, the Wall Street Journal‘s free tech blog:

“Wayin plans to make money by inserting sponsored polls into a user’s stream. For advertisers, it’s a way to get instant feedback on their products and ideas. Polls could even be tied into the very commercials running in the sporting or other live event being commented on.  ‘It’s explicit market research,’ McNealy said. ‘There is no inference required.’”

Well, that’s comforting.

Image courtesy photos.com

#3: When Forever Doesn’t Last:  There’s a sort of magic about digital archiving.  Rather than hectares of books on shelves, or rows of film cans and dusty records, once content is digitized, it can be stored almost anywhere in a fraction of the space.  Even better, access can be almost instantaneous: with a few mouse clicks, you might be able to watch your old home movies, listen to a song from your music library, or read PDF versions of old letters sent by your forebears.   And, assuming your hard drive doesn’t crash, they should last forever, right?

Wrong.  Beyond the wildly optimistic assumption of never having a drive crash – as they saying goes, ‘There’s only two types of hard drives: those that have failed and those that will‘ – digitized media isn’t meant to be permanent.  VOA’s Dave Deforest recently took a look into how long all those old VHS tapes you laboriously upgraded to DVDs can be expected to last, and learned some surprising answers.  Short answer: if you’re not re-recording your content onto new storage platforms at least once every five years, you run the risk of losing precious documents.

But all is not lost – or won’t be, if you read through some of the other helpful suggestions he and the Library of Congress offer to help keep your content current.  Best advice: don’t put it off.  If you want to keep something, back it up in at least two locations.

Periodically we like to share a few of the stories and posts from across the web that caught our eye.  There are no editorial threads implied connecting these items together, other than being interesting.

#1: Tibetan Cyber Battles: VOA’s Kurt Achin posted a report from Dharamsala, India, this week, exploring the cat-and-mouse game being played between China and Tibetan exiles.  As we’ve frequently discussed, the Internet as a tool can be wielded by just about anyone for any purpose, and the conflict over Tibet is no different.  Achin documents just some of the ways Tibetan exiles are using the web to keep track of friends and relatives inside Tibet, and how Chinese authorities are trying to frustrate those same efforts.  Among those he spoke with is Internet researcher Greg Walton, who notes:

“What is intriguing is that often we’ll see that the same command-and-control servers which are going after the big defense contractors, and stealing details of stealth bombers, or going after the big financial houses in New York – the same command-and-control servers are going after monks in Dharamsala.”

It’s a great read, and also a reminder of how long-simmering conflicts are increasingly moving online. Read the rest of this entry »

And Spreading Malware Hits Big and Small Alike

Periodically we like to share a few of the stories and posts from across the web that caught our eye.  There are no editorial threads implied connecting these items together, other than being interesting.

#1: LulzSec vs. NewsCorp: After very publicly disbanding just a few weeks ago, it seems the LulzSec hackers have come out of retirement and have a new target – Rupert Murdoch.

The “lulz” began early this week with a hack of The Sun, one of News Corporation’s many newspapers and sister publication to the recently shuttered News of the World.  “Media moguls body discovered” yelled the headline of a phony story, mocking Mr. Murdoch and the recent troubles of his News Corporation.

The bogus article was quickly erased, but the hackers warned of more serious problems to come.  Specifically, the LulzSec Twitter feed claimed the group has up to 4 gigabytes of private emails from the Sun’s servers – which they may, or may not, begin releasing, depending on which Twitter claim you believe.

@AnonymousSabu, thought to be one of LulzSec’s founders, tweeted that “We’re releasing something we found in The Sun’s mail server, shortly. Ouch. Ready for the media storm?”  But when that release failed to occur, @AnonymousIRC, associated with a hybrid LulzSec/Anonymous offshoot, tweeted this: “We think, actually we may not release emails from The Sun, simply because it may compromise the court case.”  That was quickly followed by this tweet from @LulzSec: “We’re currently working with certain media outlets who have been granted exclusive access to some of the News of the World emails we have.”

So far, no media organization has admitted to any partnerships with LulzSec, AnonOps, AntiSec or any of the other heads of the larger Anonymous hydra.  But  in an interview with British newspaper The Independent this weeek, Sabu warns that The Sun hack was “simply phase 1″ of a larger operation that hackers intend to launch against other News Corporation’s properties – and Murdoch himself.  Not content to stop there, Sabu then suggested additional targets, warning: “New York Times, Forbes, LA Times, we’re going in.” Read the rest of this entry »

Who, And Where, Are The Greatest Threats To Internet Security?

In this Sept. 24, 2010, file photo the National Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) prepares for the Cyber Storm III exercise at its operations center in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The web has been humming with talk this week – talk, concern, worry and general shpilkes – about Internet security.  There’s good reason: not only are there renewed questions about just which hacker group is responsible for what cyber-attack, but the rate and severity of computer hacks appear to be escalating rapidly.  In the last week alone the governments of Brazil, Antigua, Australia and Zimbabwe have all been hit hard, with secure and private information literally pouring out onto the web.  “Anonymous” on Tuesday declared ‘war’ on the city of Orlando, going as far as dressing Mickey Mouse up in the “Guy Fawkes” mask of AnonOps.   One day later the newly formed hacker group “AntiSec” targeted the major media firms Universal Music and Viacom, while also returning to an earlier hack – the Arizona Department of Public Safety – only this time with a new document dump of sensitive information.  It seems no-one is immune: even singer Amy Winehouse’s website was defaced Friday by a group calling itself “SwagSec”, which vows to “…take back the Internet from the white devil.”

The hacking playground has become crowded territory, and despite efforts of the FBI (also a recent hacker victim) and British authorities, there are no signs the web is becoming any less insecure.

Below are several stories we found online this week: none of them specifically concerning the Lulz-Anti-Anonymous-Swag-Sec tangle, but all that still raise serious questions of web privacy and security. Read the rest of this entry »

And Better Blogging Through Stripping

Periodically we like to share a few of the stories and posts from across the web that caught our eye.  There are no editorial threads implied connecting these items together, other than being interesting.

#1: The Fight Over Airwaves.  Several facts of war are as old as battle itself.  They are ugly, bloody affairs.  Far too much that is precious is lost.  And each new war creates its own new technology.

Military history through the centuries demonstrates the winning side doesn’t have to be the richest or biggest  – but they do have to be the most adaptable to new innovations.   In Iraq and Afghanistan, that innovation has been the IED.

A controlled IED explosion in Iraq (photo: U.S. Marine Corps)

Read the rest of this entry »

…And Taking Armenia Off

Two items recently caught our eye.  There’s not much on our part to add, but in retrospect they both seem to speak to a similar theme – that of how fragile our online worlds can be.

First, the nonprofit Access Now – a loose group campaigning for expanded online freedom and access – has released new report designed to protect pro-democracy activists in the Arab world.  “Protecting Your Security Online” comes in both Arabic and English versions, and includes many ideas and pointers for anyone wanting to protect their online activities from prying eyes.

Topics include secure browsing, circumvention technologies, encryption and many others, including this helpful tip that we think can’t be repeated enough:

“There are increasing options for utilizing GPS technology in order to demonstrate your physical location when online. This can be a powerful tool when used as part of a coordinated campaign to map out reports from the ground using mobiles during a crisis or key event, but it also gives out incredibly sensitive information about your location and activities. We recommend you turn GPS tracking off for programs such as Twitter and Bambuser unless it’s temporary and critical to an activist project you’re working on. Even if the GPS is not displayed, it is critical to disable the collection of this information in your web browser or other client.”

Beyond this specific report, the Access Now site is a rich cache of news, events, and projects focused on expanding Internet access and use, and well worth spending some time exploring.

The second item comes from Armenia, but actually begins in neighboring Georgia.  As reported here by the Guardian newspaper, it seems an elderly Georgian woman who was scavenging for old, unused copper pipes accidentally cut through an underground cable.

The cable that provides nearly all Internet access to Armenia.  Oops.

Seems nearly all of Armenia’s Internet traffic is routed through Georgia, and that particular cable.  Severed with a simple shovel, it threw Armenia’s businesses, government and 3.2 million residents  temporarily offline.  ZDNet adds this incredulous comment:

“I cannot understand how this lady managed to find and damage the cable,” Giorgi Ionatamishvili, head of marketing for Georgian Railway Telecom, told AFP in the report.  “It has robust protection and such incidents are extremely rare,” he added.

Apparently, not robust enough for a spade wielded by a 75-year-old pensioner.  The woman’s name has not been released, but wags in Georgia have already begun referring to her as “the spade-hacker.”

The connection has been repaired, and all appears well.  However, we  worry this may give Anonymous new ideas.

“Frenemies” and the Uses, or Abuses, of Social Media

We’re currently working on an update of the roiling cyber-theater that is Anonymous vs. HBGary.  Like any great drama the story is complex, has a large cast, and requires time to fully digest.  Sadly we – like many – were a few minutes late to the curtain of this production.  Regardless, our review is coming soon.

In the meantime, there were several stories that caught our eye recently – all relating to what might be termed ‘creative’ uses of social media.   As always, no editorial validation of these stories is implied on our part, other than just being interesting. Read the rest of this entry »

And Bloggers Pay the Price for Free Speech Online

Periodically we like to share a few of the stories and posts from across the web that caught our eye.  There are no editorial threads implied connecting these items together, other than being interesting.

#1 Terrorists Move to Social Media.  The open-source group Public Intelligence recently reprinted a U.S. Department of Homeland Security report that explores how extremist groups are moving into open social networks.  Taking Facebook as a case study, report authors find that terrorist groups:

“…are increasingly using Facebook, one of the largest, most popular and diverse social networking sites, both in the United States and globally, to propagate operational information, including IED recipes primarily in Arabic, but in English, Indonesian, Urdu and other languages as well.”

What exactly could a jihadi do on such a public platform?  Other than sharing tactical information, the authors say social networks can serve as a gateway to other extremist groups, provide an outlet for propaganda or other “extremist ideological messaging,” and aid in remote reconnaissance. Read the rest of this entry »